How You Can Help Advance Research
Are you facing a surgical procedure? If so, you can help
advance research!
We are funding two separate research teams and they both are in need of tissue
samples. If you know that you already need surgery and you're been diagnosed
with ME/CFIDS, you can be an invaluable help.

A tissue sample is a very simple procedure that involves a very
thin scraping of
skin taken during a surgical procedure. This is put onto a slide and affixed with
paraffin. If you ask your surgeon to take two slides of each area he's able to and
mail them to us, we will forward them to the researchers.

Your privacy is always protected. The researchers will only
have your age,
your sex, and the type of surgery done (so they know the area that the sample is
from) but they will not have your name or know where you live. The National
CFIDS Foundation, Inc. will ask you to sign a privacy release form but the form
itself explains that your information will go no further! By law, however, we have
to inform you of your rights and have your signature.

When the slide is fixed in paraffin, it has a long life. The
researchers are able
to use these specimens to verify their own research findings which they, presently,
have to only take from blood samples.

We are not asking you, of course, to submit to any invasive
procedure merely to
advance research. We are only asking this of patients who already know that they
are facing surgery in the future out of necessity. Sending these samples directly to
our office means that your privacy will always be protected as well as the research
being presently done.

Remember, if you are facing any surgical procedure, to present a
copy of our
anesthesia protocol to the anesthsiologist prior to the surgery. The most important
thing for them to know is to avoid the sodium channel, a fact that has surfaced
only during the past year from research funded by the NCF.